2 2 1 The Ottawa Naturalist. [March 



Let me make an appeal for more natural teaching in our 

 rural schools— teaching that will look to the pleasure and comfort 

 of the child, and also that will tend to prepare him for the lite he 

 is to live. This can be done best, as already stated, by the proper 

 use of Nature Study and the School Garden. 



If, then, the rural school is to fulfil its mission to the com- 

 munity, as the handmaid of agriculture, it mu^t be a school ad- 

 apted to the needs of the community. It must be an adaptation of 

 education to need. Whose needs? 1 he farmer's. To meet these 

 he must have the advantage of the best schools ; and the best 

 schools for him are those which teach him the things that he 

 needs to know. What does he need to know ? What are his 

 educational needs? As a man and a citizen, he needs to know 

 just what other people do —no more, no less. He needs to know 

 how to read, to write, to compute, etc. As an agriculturist, his 

 needs are more special. He deak with the natural world. His 

 enjoyment and his livelihood depend largely upon his understand- 

 ing of the laws that control the world about him. He must there- ^ 

 fore know Nature. He can know her best by becoming interested 

 in her When he is young is the time to engender an interest 

 that will continue throughout life. The farmer above all others 

 should be a thorough nature student, and one of the purposes of 

 the public school should be to help and direct him in these studies. 

 One of the great aims of Nature Study is to interest the child 

 in agricultural problems. The School Garden more than anything 

 else will achieve this purpose. Such a garden will be indispensable 

 in the schools of the future. Ere long it will be as much a part of 

 the regular equipment of the school as books, blackboards, charts 

 and apparatus are. The making of a School Garden is an epoch 

 in the lite of each school ; it marks the progress of the school in 

 pedagogical ideas. Its prime motive is not to be ornamental, but 

 to be'^useful. In many parts of England and Germany it is rapidly 

 becoming the " school"— the place where most of the instruction 

 is given. This is the ideal method, " a school in the country, 

 where hardihood of life can be cultivated, and where life is simple 

 and varied ; a school where masters lead a common life with the 

 boys, working at gardening or plowing, as well as with books. In 

 such a school, work consists of interchange of occupation— contin- 

 uous but varied; some lighter, some severer, some taxing muscles 

 and some brain. In such' a school there is established a collective, 

 corporate life, in which each member learns self-reliance, individ- 

 ual responsibility and constant adjustment of the relation of self 

 to other people. The virtue that here grows up, will not be nega- 

 tive — constrained by external forces — but active virtue that 

 springs from having lived in a well-organized community. 



